Time-to-passage estimation on periphery : better for biological motion?

In  previous  studies,  complex  motion  stimuli  were  judged  as  passing  sooner  than  rigid stimuli  but  reflected  more  uncertainty  in  the  judgments  as  revealed  by  precision  loss  and  longer reaction  times.  It  is  known  that  biological  motion  can  be  perceived  in  the  periphery .  In  the everyday  life  people  are  required  to  interact  with  or  to  estimate  motion  variables  of  other  agents located  on  the  periphery ,  at  different  locations  of  the  visual  field.  In  this  study ,  stimuli  were presented  in  different  peripheral  location  (16°,  32°  and  48°).  In  a  time-­to-­passage  (TTP)  task  rigid (RM),  biological  (BM)  and  scrambled  (SM)  motion  conditions  were  compared.  Seven  simulated velocities  were  combined  with  seven  starting  distances,  resulting  in  49  levels  of  TTP:  24 conditions  that  arrived  before  1s  and  24  that  arriving  after  1s.  Subjects  had  to  decide  whether the  point-‐‑light  walker  (PLW)  passed  the  eye  plane  before  or  after  a  reference  time  (1s)  signaled by  a  tone.  Subjects  could  judge  time  to  passage  of  PLW  peripherally  to  an  eccentricity  of  at  least 48o.  Judgments  for  complex  motion  patterns  (BM  and  SM)  showed  an  anticipation  of  the passage  combined  with  a  loss  of  precision  when  compared  with  RM,  at  eccentricity  16o.  The effect  of  eccentricity  on  precision  was  revealed  by  the  increase  of  SD  along  eccentricities  for SM.  The  TTP  judgment  seemed  to  become  less  precise  as  the  stimuli  were  displaced  farther along  the  peripheral  field.  For  BM,  an  improvement  on  precision  was  verified  at  eccentricity  32o, and  a  subsequent  deterioration  just  at  eccentricity  48o.  The  anticipation  of  the  passage  for  BM was  no  longer  found  on  periphery ,  while  the  differences  on  the  precision  between  BM  and  RM vanished.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A cumulative index to the 1974 issues of a continuing bibliography

This publication is a cumulative index to the abstracts contained in supplements 125 through 136 of Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A Continuing Bibliography. It includes three indexes--subject, personal author, and corporate source

An investigation of performance and productivity in petroleum retailing in Malaysia

ABSTRACT The petroleum retailing industry in Malaysia has long been established since after World War two. The business environment of petroleum retailing industry is very much difficult with issues such as eroding real margins and rising costs that impact on the industry. The Malaysian petroleum retailing industry is a regulated industry and operating costs have been increasing for time to time. The automatic pricing mechanism was established in 1983 and the margins which were set by the government have never changed. However, the industry has grown and the market continues to be very competitive. The operators or dealers of service stations are required to do something in the market in order to survive in the industry. There are many factors can influencing the performance and/or productivity in this industry. The owners or managers should have to know and identify the external and internal environments which can dictate or affect their operations. Based on the external and internal environmental factors, two groups 0f variables were chosen from both factors to investigate the effect and impact of these factors on the industry. The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase of the study, the researcher analyzed the common problems areas and the techniques used to approach these problems by service station owners and managers. With the initial stage completed, the researchers utilized this information in attempting to identify a methodology for analyzing performance and productivity of service stations. In the second phase of the study, the survey with structured questionnaire was done in southern part Of Peninsular Malaysia. The results of this research, mainly based on the study of the performance and productivity show that both internal (in this study represented by owner/manager and store characteristics) and external (represented by location and competitive characteristics) environmental variables played the significant roles in performance and productivity of service stations in Malaysia. Interestingly, while both internal and external environmental variables are significantly related to performance, only internal environmental variables can predict the productivity. In other words, internal environmental variables are better predictors of performance than productivity by service stations in this industry. Beside that, the study also found. that there is a differences between owner and manager regarding performance and productivity. As a conclusion, the researcher suggested that both measurement should be considered when any study need to be done on any industries especially in business and retailing in the future

Personal imaging

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-223).In this thesis, I propose a new synergy between humans and computers, called "Humanistic Intelligence" (HI), and provide a precise definition of this new form of human-computer interaction. I then present a means and apparatus for reducing this principle to practice. The bulk of this thesis concentrates on a specific embodiment of this invention, called Personal Imaging, most notably, a system which I show attains new levels of creativity in photography, defines a new genre of documentary video, and goes beyond digital photography/video to define a new renaissance in imaging, based on simple principles of projective geometry combined with linearity and superposition properties of light. I first present a mathematical theory of imaging which allows the apparatus to measure, to within a single unknown constant, the quantity of light arriving from each direction, to a fixed point in space, using a collection of images taken from a sensor array having a possibly unknown nonlinearity. Within the context of personal imaging, this theory is a contribution in and of itself (in the sense that it was an unsolved problem previously), but when also combined with the proposed apparatus, it allows one to construct environment maps by simply looking around. I then present a new form of connected humanistic intelligence in which individuals can communicate, across boundaries of time and space, using shared environment maps, and the resulting computer-mediated reality that arises out of long-term adaptation in a personal imaging environment. Finally, I present a new philosophical framework for cultural criticism which arises out of a new concept called 'humanistic property'. This new philosophical framework has two axes, a 'reflectionist' axis and a 'diffusionist' axis. In particular, I apply the new framework to personal imaging, thus completing a body of work that lies at the intersection of art, science, and technology.by Steve Mann.Ph.D

Psychophysical estimation of the best lighting for commercial counters of fruits and vegetables

Naturalness and aesthetic preference are two important aspects of color rendering that are difficult to capture with rendering indices. Several factors may influence observer's choices in complex ways, e.g. color memory and the composition of the scenes, and the best illumination for specific conditions may be difficult to predict from existing indices. The aim of this work was to estimate psychophysically the spectral composition of the best lighting for commercial food counters. Stimuli were monitor simulations of commercial food counters containing fruits and vegetables derived from hyperspectral data obtained in a local supermarket. Illuminants were synthetized from Judd's daylight spectral basis functions with variable coefficients such that their color defined a chromaticity grid over and around Planckian locus with correlated color temperature (CCT) in the range 2,222-20,000 K. Two conditions were tested: in one, the naturalness condition, observers selected the illuminant producing the most natural colors; in the other, the preference condition, observers selected the illuminant producing the most pleasant appearance. The average CCT in the preference condition was significantly lower than that obtained in the naturalness condition, by about 2,400 K. The average chromaticity of each condition was closer to the Planckian locus than to the daylight locus.(undefined)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Ohio State University Bulletin

Classes available for students to enroll in during the 1976-1977 academic year for The Ohio State University